That's just the issue, isn't it? Apple should write their own control surface app. Theirs would blow the others out of the water.

Nah, not at all. First of all this is exactly the kind of product you want developed by people who actually want to use it, not by a company that will create a new paradigm first and then make it work second. Give me an iPad interface that runs the program, not one where the tail is trying to wag the dog. I want my (iPad controlled) programs to act exactly as they already do, otherwise I wouldn't be using them. Not until Apple proves they have been sitting in some audio production sessions (for example) for a change and taking pro feedback seriously.

Second, for the same reason Apple pushes other vendors' iPhone cases, Apple is happy to have created a market for developers to have to themselves. They'll sell more iPads based on people seeing great third party apps running cool gear in the field than if pro developers felt they were competing with a 99¢ Apple controller.

V-Control Pro at $50 is not a new program, it's hugely popular, and I have much more faith in maker Neyrinck staying on that horse than Apple. There's a $20 V-Control, but currently not in the app store, and several other cheaper alternatives. If Apple DID come out with a cheap app I'm sure they'd purposely make it NOT as desirable for pros as V-Control Pro.

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I'm amazed by all these people who just can't wait. Didn't you all learn 'delay gratification' in kindergarten? Supposedly the first more adult behaviour we learn.

Everyone delays gratification for different things. Me? I could care less about the car I drive, the clothes I wear, the toaster in my kitchen...heck, my kitchen itself. However, I budget about $20K for new Apple products every year and give last year's models away to relatives.

Everyone delays gratification for different things. Me? I could care less about the car I drive, the clothes I wear, the toaster in my kitchen...heck, my kitchen itself. However, I budget about $20K for new Apple products every year and give last year's models away to relatives.

It takes all sorts...

I like me some Apple but $20k? Does this somehow include a business side or is it all for gadgets in the home?

I suppose that's the smart move to make. But I think it'll still be a while before anybody has a new iPad 3 in their hands. Will I be able to be without my iPad 2 for maybe 6-8 weeks or even longer? The iPad has become the ultimate bathroom companion for me. Hmmm, that's a tough decision actually.

I hope they increase the res of iTunes movies from HD to Full HD for the Retina iPad.

Resolution is a tricky thing. What's higher resolution, a 32-inch screen displaying a 720P image or a 60-inch screen displaying a 1080P image. After all, you might have more pixels of information but by spreading it out over a larger area, in absolute terms it's not a given that the 1080P image on the much bigger screen is really higher resolution.

When you start tinkering with distance from the screen, then it gets even trickier.

I suspect that 1080P only matters if you have a really big screen that you need to feed.

I can't say if for taking in movies, the iPad needs to be provided with higher resolution than 720P. Probably not but I'm not up on the technicalities involved. There are other activities that would benefit a lot more from making use of a higher resolution.

When you consider that many consumers thought they were getting HD feeding standard-def images into big-screen sets, I suspect you could swap out a 1080P feed for a 720P and more than half of end users couldn't tell the difference even on a large screen. My theory is that a generation raised on standard-def TV have grown accustomed to being not at all observant when taking in TV content. The same sort of thing is happening on the music side which is kind of sad, really. We're coming to a point where we have the know how to reproduce content exceedingly well and yet are choosing to provide poorer quality than the technology is capable of for a variety of reasons.

I suppose that it makes sense that a species that started off living in caves has the capacity to take something not so great and treat it as if it's rather terrific. Nothing wrong with that I suppose.

The desktop version of FCPX has a minimum 2GB RAM requirement so I'd expect the iPad 3 will need at least 1GB RAM and most likely would exclude it from the iPad 2 like Apple did with iMovie for the iPad 1.

Price-wise, Garageband is 3-3.5x more expensive for desktop than mobile versions so $299 -> $99 for FCPX.

People might pay that for an iPad app but I don't think Apple should go higher than $49. Given that there's no way to connect an external filesystem, it would really be limited to proxy edits.

For example, plug in your iPad, go into FCPX and click 'send to iPad' and it would generate 720p ProRes proxy files and copy them to your iPad. About 90 minutes of footage will take up 15GB.

Then while you are away on holiday or just away from your computer for a while, you can edit your story and the next time you plug in your iPad, you just get the edit copied back that links up with the source files.

It's not a very consumer-oriented app though and won't really offer a great deal more than iMovie for the iPad.

I imagine we'll mainly see the same kind of stuff they demoed for the iPhone retina display. For games, they will have to improve GPU performance by 4x just to keep the same frame rate. As the following site shows, the performance difference changes directly with the number of pixels being rendered:

So if a game changes from rendering at 1024 x 768 natively to 2048 x 1536, they are going to have to use a GPU 4x faster than the dual-core chip they already use - SGX543 MP2. The Vita uses an SGX543 MP4 but it doesn't even render at iPad 1 resolution.

Apple will need an SGX543 MP8 (there is an MP16 option) to maintain the same performance as the iPad 2 at the higher resolution. Of course, if some games developers choose to render at a lower resolution, those games will see a big FPS jump - basically iPad 1 resolution games would run faster than the Vita. Then it will be the Rogue series 6 in 2013 for the iPad 3S with a further 5x speed increase.

I expect a dual-core CPU to keep the power draw down.

I hope one of the features for the iPad 3 is anti-glare using polarisation or some other kind of filter though. That would a big improvement that can be easily demonstrated. Resolution increases are a bit harder to show.

Haha. While I am sitting on options, my employer's stock has trended sideways since the 2000 tech bust. C'est la vie! No, rather it's being 53, having over-saved for a number of decades, and now figuring out a way to die with a zero balance. Dividing my savings by an estimated 10 years left, and accounting for medical surprises, etc, gives me 20K/year for playthings. And, other than Apple's gear, there aren't many playthings that interest me that aren't already free e.g. Perl, Python, C++, etc.

A lot was made of LucasArts licensing the "Unreal 3" engine for mobile games in April 2011.

I think LucasArts has been -- very, very quietly -- developing a kickass "Star Wars" game [with an online multiplayer component] that's tailor-made for iPad 3's new monster GPU+RetinaScreen

Since this event is going to be the biggest, high profile product launch of 2012, I would not be surprised in the least to see Gabe Newell onstage with some iOS "Half-Life"/"Portal" news, as well.
After all, the stage has already been set with the "Steam" app for iOS.
And Mssr. Newell has been veddy, veddy pro-Apple as of late ....

Loads of games have been done using Unreal Engine 3 though and no ports to iOS: